Got enemies on Facebook? Facebook is so eager to protect copyright that the mere accusation of copyright infringement is enough to get an account locked. Ars found this out the hard way Thursday morning when our own Facebook page became inaccessible, with no warning, no explanation, and no clear appeal process.

To make matters worse, Facebook is not responsive to inquiries about account lockout, and the company provides absolutely zero useful direction on how to rectify a complaint.

We have removed or disabled access to the following content that you have posted on Facebook because we received a notice from a third party that the content infringes or otherwise violates their rights:

Fbpage: Ars Technica

We strongly encourage you to review the content you have posted to Facebook to make sure that you have not posted any other infringing content, as it is our policy to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers when appropriate.

This is a rather useless notice. No details about the alleged infringement are given; all Facebook can do is muster a link to a generic help page which provides no additional clarification as to the real cause of the account lockout. At least the help page has a contact e-mail address, but we have received no response as of yet.

Prior to the account lockout, we had received no notices of infringement or warnings. Truly, we awoke to find that Facebook had summoned a judge, jury, and executioner and carried out its swift brand of McJustice all without bothering to let us know that there was even a problem.

Further investigation has revealed just how flawed Facebook's infringement reporting system is. To begin with, someone making a complaint can provide any third-party e-mail address they choose. So it is rather easy to spoof the origin of a complaint, while giving Facebook and the accused no chance for a direct rejoinder.

Everyone who uses Facebook is on some level a Facebook partner. A thoroughgoing social site, it is nothing without its users. That Facebook would so harshly judge and move against its most valuable assets without any semblance of fairness or evenhandedness is disappointing.

We will update this story throughout the day as we work to find some resolution. As of now, no one at Facebook has bothered to respond to our inquiries.

Update 10:29am CDT: In our attempt to find more information about this phenomenon (since we are still waiting on any sort of response from Facebook), we have found that this problem has been snowballing for other sites as well over the last month or so. Neowin's Facebook page was removed several times for alleged infringement and it seems the only way to resolve the issue is to get the original complaintant to retract the claim. But what happens if that person did so maliciously, or put in bogus contact info? Too bad, because that mystery person can apparently file a fake claim and never check the Internet again, leaving you with no Facebook page.

And if you think it's just Neowin, you're wrong. Redmond Pie was also hit with this issue as recently as this morning. Additionally, sex blogger and rights activist Violet Blue has posted some particularly damning details about the process on ZDnet, pointing out that her own women's group was removed from Facebook last year after anti-porn crusaders filed faux infringement claims—the group even openly celebrated it on their own site. If it has been this easy to file a malicious claim and take down an entire brand's page, why hasn't Facebook done anything about it?

Update 10:30am CDT: One of our commenters, going by the name of rumielf, relays a story about his own experiences with the appeal process:

"This happened to a page I admin for a theater group. We had a slew of cast photos pinged with copyright infringement violations. The appeal process was drawn out. I had to file a countercomplaint explaining why my images did not violate any copyright. After that the other party had 14 business days to bring a lawsuit against me or the FB copyright issue would be dropped. "

Update 10:50am CDT: Dave Legg from Neowin is posting in our comments as well, adding additional color to their situation: "We (Neowin) tried to file a countercomplaint, but Facebook just refused to acknowledge it, they simply ignored the content of the email and said once again that we had to contact the complainant and resolve it with them or take them to court."

Update 11:10am CDT: A reader by the name of Mark Weikert wrote in to tell us his experiences with this phenomenon when running his own photography page on Facebook. (Snippets posted with Mark's permission.)

"I have had this happen twice now. I am a professional photographer and I have been using Facebook to increase my business. This has been working great so far. The first time, I was the only admin of the fan page and my account got suspended (for what reason, I still do not know). And thus, my fan page was automatically assigned to some random 'fan' of the page. Of course they renamed it and stole all of my fans.

When contacting Facebook to try and get my main account reinstated and my fan page back, (7 total emails spanning a 2 week time) I got no response at all. My network had been crushed and I had to start from scratch."

Update 11:33am CDT: People keep giving us more and more contacts within Facebook to try, and we have e-mailed all of them with (still) no response. However, we were told that Brad McCarty from TheNextWeb (who is also covering this story) has heard back from someone, and that it's allegedly being looked into.

Update 11:45am CDT: Facebook has now contacted us and says it's "looking into the specific takedown request that was made."

Update 12:33pm CDT: Several readers have expressed concern that we're dropping this issue now that it's being looked into. We're not. For one, the saga isn't even over for us yet (the Ars Facebook page is not back, and we haven't heard anything yet about the claim itself or how to appeal it). Two, as evidenced by our updates and comments, many people seem to be affected by this, and some of them don't have as loud megaphones as we do. We'll continue trying to find out why this process is the way it is, and if it will ever be changed.

Update 1:00pm CDT: Interestingly, Facebook has given ReadWriteWeb an official statement on the matter (we continue to wait for any update on our situation and have not received any sort of statement). "When we do this, we notify the person who shared the content so he or she can take appropriate action, which may include contacting the reporting party or following up with Facebook," a Facebook spokesperson told ReadWriteWeb. The only problem with this is that Facebook didn't tell us which content was allegedly infringing—as you can see from our notice above, Facebook's notification told us that "Ars Technica" was the infringing content. How dare we post our own content to our own Facebook page!

ReadWriteWeb also recounts another horror story from a Facebook page administrator:

"In one case, with Hamard Dar's Rewriting Technology site, the page went down for over a month. Dar says he was targeted for money. 'He wanted me to pay him...to get the page back,' he told us. Dar didn't go for that option, however, because there was no guarantee the scammer would return the page once paid. Instead, Dar ran his own personal investigation until he discovered the person involved and threatened him to withdraw the complaint, saying he would report him to U.S. cyber crime enforcement (the scam artist lives in Chicago). The page was then returned."

Update 2:25pm: Facebook is still looking into our situation, but we hear that we might be able to expect a serious update within a few hours. In the meantime, this is the official Facebook statement sent to us:

"We take seriously both the interests of people who post content and those of rights holders. Abuse of DMCA and other intellectual property notice procedures is a challenge for every major Internet service but we work to ensure that we don't take content down as a result of fraudulent notices. We have been in touch with Ars Technica and are investigating this case."

Update 5:54pm: This isn't a very substantial update, because nothing has happened since the last one. We have only heard very limited communications from Facebook about our specific situation, and no communications whatsoever about the problem in general and why the process is set up this way.

Update 6:34pm: Our Facebook page has returned, but Facebook still has not answered any of our questions about why there's no complaintant name or e-mail verification before shutting down a site, or why there's no apparent way for people to appeal (we had to make liberal use of our PR contacts in order to get any kind of response, and most people don't have that liberty). We are told that the company is preparing a statement for possibly later tonight, or tomorrow morning.

Update 8:37pm CDT: Facebook has now sent a statement:

"We have investigated a number of recent intellectual property cases and have restored four pages as a result. We apologize for any inconvenience. Abuse of DMCA and other intellectual property notice procedures is a challenge for every major Internet service and we take it seriously.

We have invested significant resources into creating a dedicated team that uses specialized tools, systems and technology to review and properly handle intellectual property notices. This system evaluates a number of factors when deciding how to respond and, in many cases, we require the reporter to provide additional information before we can take action. As a result of these efforts, the vast majority of intellectual property notices that we receive are handled without incident. Of course, no system is perfect and we are always striving to improve our practices. As such, we will be considering the results of our investigation into this matter as we continue to refine our systems and procedures."

Ken Fisher
Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation. Emailken@arstechnica.com//Twitter@kenfisher